


Tetrameter

by dogandmonkeyshow



Series: Watson's Woes JWP 2017 fics [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, writers block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: She needed to conjure iambs and all her brain was giving her was limericks.





	Tetrameter

**Author's Note:**

> Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet [an iambic foot is one unstressed + one stressed syllable]. (Wikipedia)
> 
> Written for the Watson's Woes DW comm's July Writing Prompts daily challenge, prompt #6: _Poetic license_.

Rosie stared at the blank computer screen in front of her. White and flat and barren, its emptiness a reminder of her looming deadline and a rebuke for procrastination. She checked the Wikipedia page again. _Ballad metre_. She clicked on the link to _iamb_ and read the page for the fourth time. Now she really was procrastinating. A glance at the clock told her she had about thirty minutes until her dad came upstairs and shooed her off to bed.

She needed to conjure iambs and all her brain was giving her was limericks.

_There once was a girl named Rosie_  
_Who lived with her dad, very cozy_  
_In a little white house_  
_Built as if for a mouse_  
_Entertained by his best friend quite dozy_

Rosie snorted, imagining the look on Uncle Sherlock's face if he discovered she'd ever called him “dozy”. The only thing worse would be Mrs McGarrigal's face if she handed that in instead of the assignment: some crap imitation of Emily Dickinson, who—despite the raptures of her classmates—Rosie thought sounded like the biggest bore on the face of the earth.

_Inspector Lestrade is a very nice man_  
_He tries to help people whenever he can_  
_'Til Holmes comes along_  
_And tells him he's wrong_  
_And acts like Greg's someone's old nan_

She stared at the words on the screen; even for limericks they were pretty lame. But her dad never expected her to get top marks in English anyway, so she thought she could probably get away with coasting on this one. 

And if Mrs McGarrigal complained, Rosie could always point out that she was always telling them to write what they knew. And while Rosie would be the first to acknowledge that “creativity” was nowhere near the top of the list of things she was good at, she recognised the truth when she saw it. What she knew— _her_ truth—was more like a series of rude, tasteless or downright bad limericks than iambic _anything_. After all, hadn't Emily Dickinson's dad locked her in an attic or something, Rosie thought. If you had nothing to do with your time but do embroidery, stare out the window and write poetry, you could waste a week counting beats and stresses and not even notice your life slipping away.

In the service of truthfulness, Mrs McGarrigal was getting limericks and if she didn't like it she could—in Rosie's esteemed opinion—get bent. Life was too short for iambic tetrameter.


End file.
